With ‘body modifications’, Lukas Kerk is investigating an unusual topic in his doctoral project. In episode 25 of the podcast “Neues aus der Alten Welt”, he introduces himself and provides insights into the subject of Pre- and Protohistory, which covers around 99% of human history and uses material sources rather than written records. He also explains whether Ötzi's tattoos really had a medical reason, as is often assumed in research due to their location on certain parts of the body.

Papyri: These are just those texts torn from everyday life - administrative files, contracts of all kinds, documents from the tax administration, private letters... The question of what papyri reveal about the lives of ancient people is the focus of episode 10 of the podcast "News from the Ancient World". Dr. Patrick Sänger, Professor of Ancient History and head of the newly founded Papyrology Research Centre, explains how to elicit knowledge about the past from ancient texts.

There is no area in ancient history to which coins do not have something to say. In episode 9 of the podcast "News from the Ancient World", Dr. Katharina Martin from the Research Centre for Ancient Numismatics and Oliwia Ullrich, who is currently working on her doctoral thesis on horse depictions on ancient coins, present how diverse the information is that can be elicited from ancient money. They also report on the International Numismatic Congress 2022, which took place in Warsaw and where they met the world's coin experts.

Who was Barbarossa? Politician, crusader, peacemaker and tyrant - the facets of the emperor are as complex as the Middle Ages themselves. The podcast “Listen, Barbarossa” reflects in an exemplary way how a historical perception of a person changes. The conversation partners in the podcast, Inès von Patow and the historian Prof. Dr. Jan Keupp, illustrate the many-sided perceptions of Barbarossa over 900 years and talk about the order of the estates, globalisation and women as political actors in the Middle Ages.

This is “Claiming Beethoven”. We portrait a group of international musicologists and historians examining aspects of propaganda, collaboration, resistance, persecution and exile, to learn about the distortion of historiography and the relevance for our own present times. This podcast by Michael Custodis and his team at the University of Münster is related to the project “The Role of Beethoven and His Music in Nazi-Occupied European Countries”. 

The situation on the Ukrainian border has been tense for weeks. In the podcast, Prof. Dr. Ricarda Vulpius from the Institute for Eastern European History assesses the current situation. She considers the “security guarantees” demanded by Russian President Vladimir Putin in the conflict over Ukraine to be primarily an expression of psychological insecurity. The discussion also focuses on Germany's role. From her point of view, Germany has to get rid of the basic attitude that it has a historical debt exclusively to Russia with regard to the Second World War.